My Un-Labor Day

May 1 is the day for labor. It is supposed that one day of the year that laborers are given a tribute.

I consider myself a laborer. Some say a workaholic even. But May 1, 2009 is the one day I didn’t work. I woke up at the usual time but despite being with the people I work with, I hardly thought of work of all. Or at least, not with the usual intensity I feel for it.

Oh, I had fun. I drove from Manila to Los Banos, Laguna, towing my “kids” at work. Magenta tagged along. It was the office’s unofficial summer outing. With the rains coming in early, there was a scramble to go swimming out of town, us included.
The thing with my “kids”—Wonder Twins and Aquaman-is that they have never met anyone like me. So between Magenta and myself, they were in stitches the whole trip.
Everything that we do seems new and fun. And I am selfish enough to take pleasure in showing them things and places they haven’t experienced before.

We went to Splash Mountain. We arrived around 2pm and were greeted by the sight of a sea of people. And I mean sea! We took a walk along the series of pools taking it all in. And the color of the water was close to ashen! No way I will swim in that! It’s a good thing one of the group, let’s call her the Kitchen Goddess Major, had a friend in the management, who advised us that we only need to upgrade and we'll gain access to a separate pool where the water was still chlorine blue.

Later on in the day, other officemates joined us. They are from our Commissary. We make the food that we sell to our customers that’s why we have a Commissary. The next batch was Kitchen Goddess Major and Minor, and the Shoemaker’s Elves, Elvis & Costello.

After eating an early dinner, we made our way to the pool.

In the pool, we had more fun. It was good to be with people who are willing to play around. We played “volleyball”, tag, touch ball, agawang base, etc.

Later on in the evening, Superman and I had a very serious talk. It was serious because it was the kind of talk that was ours alone. I have said before that he and I have formed a friendship that I know will last a long time. That friendship afforded us to say and reveal things about ourselves we may even hesitate to share with other friends. We share a candidness that I cherish very much. Now that he and Invisible Man have merged together in my head, forming the single Superman entity, I have acquired a fondness for him that is very hard to define.

I will not extol his virtues anymore. He is who he is. And I have made the resolve to help him keep his self-imposed vow of chastity. Of course, that doesn’t mean I will not have my own fun needling him the whole time. But, this is a rare man. I will not let baser intentions ruin him.

And that was my un-Labor Day. How was yours?